March 22, 2023 • 23 mins
BYNTK Cover featuring Yadira Caro
Yadi Caro has been working with teams of developers and engineers for over a decade with US military organizations. Her expertise is to work with teams and customers solving organizational business processes and creating technical solutions. Her certifications include Organizational Behavior (Harvard), Project Management Professional (PMP), Scrum Product Owner, Certified Knowledge Manager, Lean Six Sigma, and Business Analytics (MIT).
She has worked with hundreds of customers across the world as she fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. While she continues her work as a consultant in the Defense industry, Yadi also provides training and coaching to help teams and individuals master the "soft" skills they need to succeed. She also recently completed an ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and Life Coach Certification Program, which enriches her experience to coach neurodiverse individuals.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:12):
This is Edwin k Morris,
and you are about to embark on thenext Pioneer Knowledge Services
because you need to know a digitalresource for you to listen to
folks share their experience andknowledge around the field of knowledge
management and nonprofit work.
(00:35):
I am Javi Carro and I amoriginally from Puerto Rico.
Now I live in sunny Florida.
My day job is primarily being atech consultant, project manager,
scrum master,
a bunch of different things within theDepartment of Defense in the tech field.
I'm also the host of thepodcast Hardcore Soft Skills,
(00:55):
which I created a couple of years ago,
particularly to focus on those skills,
those non-technical skillsthat are so essential for, uh,
any project for our roles. And Ibeen wanting to go deep into those.
And every week I talkwith renowned experts.
We dig deep into different skillsby negotiation, conflict resolution.
So in each episode a different skill.
(01:17):
I'm also been in the field ofknowledge management for about, uh,
a decade or over a decade now.And I enjoy it very much. I,
I love talking about in terms of thecombination of knowledge management with
how organizations work, howconnections are created.
Um,
so the last book I read was called Kung Fu
(01:40):
and it's actually from a stem horn.
And what I love about that book is thatit provided so much specific advice
on how to basically do martialarts in verbal communication.
So it was very interesting inthe sense of, uh, how to say no,
how to address difficultconversations, how to sell yourself,
(02:00):
and why elevator speeches do notwork. So I enjoy that book very much.
That's very cool. So kind of a,
a defensive posture inthe mental space of verbal
communication.
Yeah, I guess it's, it is,you know, I like that concept.
She coined that term Tong fu. So I Ilove it. Burn. It's awesome.
(02:22):
Oh, that's cool. Can you definefor me what a soft skill is?
A soft skill is those skills that are not
necessarily associated to a particular,you know, a task such as, for example,
I like to define it in comparisonwith hard skills. Like hard skills,
meaning like how do you operate asystem? How do you do a particular task?
(02:45):
Soft skill is, let's say, a littlebit mushy in the sense of like,
they're considered, it is presumedthat we have them overall by,
as part of our personality. Like,
you're a great communicator or youare great at resolving conflict.
Those other things that if we didn'thave them, basically whatever,
our day-to-day liveswill be very difficult.
(03:06):
And the key thing is tounderstand that it's a skill,
that it's somethingthat it's learnable too.
So if I'm not a greatcommunicator in public,
I could become one through practice.Okay. The same through negotiation,
collaboration. Cause some of us,um, may love working with teams,
others will say, well, I don't wannawork with teams, but not necessarily,
cuz we all like to collaborate. There'sjust techniques and tools to do that.
(03:29):
So that's what I meanby the term soft skills.
Would comprehension and awarenessbe a soft skill in your book? I,
comprehension and awareness?
Um, I think they're building blocksfor, uh, skill. Like for example,
when you're talking about awareness,uh, skill, I will define yes, awareness,
like self-awareness or evenawareness of others. So those are,
(03:49):
and those are things that we definitelyneed to cultivate and we manage
ourselves. Cause sometimeswe're just, well.
I'm, I'm, well, I'm curiousabout that. Yeah. Because the,
in the last five years or so,
empathy has become a partof the corporate landscape.
And as far as being empathetic,an empathetic leader,
an empathetic listener, collaborator,
(04:11):
and empathy is not a, what I wouldcall a technical skill. Mm-hmm.
. And it's definitelymushy to a lot of folks.
What's behind getting softskills reinforced in an
organization?
Yeah, it's important. And,and from what I've seen,
you can have a team of like wonderfulpeople that are amazing in what they do.
(04:33):
Yet when it comes to them to getthem all together, work in a room,
just have a meeting, it becomesvery difficult at times. You know,
if you didn't have the ability tofacilitate another skill to facilitate a
meeting, to understandlike, okay, this is a,
this is a way we could do it andthese are the tools that we can use to
facilitate it is important to listen,
which is of a very overlooked skillas well. So Uhhuh,
(04:56):
it is the foundation for making surethat those hard skills sets those all
brilliant people are actuallyable to create great things. So,
as I say in my podcast,
soft skills make hard skills workbecause it is very important that yes,
you have all the awesomepeople on your team,
but how do you make sure thatthey work together in a way?
How do they manage their time?
And especially now in this timeswhere we are transitioning from
(05:21):
remote work to in-office work. Soin both environments or hybrid,
the ability to work together and find theright tools for that is very important
to make sure that your company or yourorganization is productive and that
everybody can be happy at workand just produce great things.
Is there a solution out there thatis either artificial intelligence or
(05:42):
just technology basedthat helps fill this gap?
Um, the gap of.
Uh, the soft skills.Mm-hmm., like
you can't just say, okay,
we're gonna spend the next five years,
every week we're gonna train on softskills and everybody's gonna do this,
and we're, we're all gonna get better.Mm-hmm.. Right? So I mean,
is there something that supplementsthe workspace to help elevate soft
(06:04):
skills, um, through that? A formal, youknow, taking a two week course or, you.
Know Yeah. Cause taking I guess theAI or, or like the automation part,
let's say. So you couldtake like a course. Okay.
And you could takethings like, for example,
I'm thinking of there's tools that maywanna be able automate chat, for example.
They could be configured in a way thatyou could use better terms, like, uh,
(06:24):
you know, more empathetic terms orthings like that. That those things are,
they could be trained, this couldbe trainable. Yeah. However,
when it comes to working together,
that part of working together to createthose things very important to you as
individuals cultivate thoseskills. And it's not just,
I'm glad you mentioned a part ofcourses cause you could take courses,
listen to a bunch of podcasts,but it's through practice.
(06:46):
And even getting a coach for that or orgetting people to help you practice that
is very important too. It'snot just like, I took a class,
now I'm a master of publicspeaker. Of course not.
So it was a matter of like practicingYeah. And getting coaching too. Yeah. Do.
You see that soft skills isan artifact of a work culture?
Or is the work culture definethe soft skills, right?
(07:09):
Is is there a prescription to make agood selection in one hiring mm-hmm.
and two,
building that culturethat wants this mm-hmm.
edge ofhaving the soft skills.
Yeah.
And actually it's great that you askthat questions because what I've seen,
for example, in many teams is that youhave some people that will hire, yeah,
(07:30):
okay,
we're gonna hire these people for theirtechnical skills and these are the other
people that will be like, oh,they're great communicator.
Or they bring the soft skills in.
But why not ingrain both in all theindividuals that you have in the
organization? Cause you willhave, you could hire, uh,
amazing people and have this other personthat you're gonna think are gonna fill
in those caps for the soft skilland it may not always work. Yeah.
(07:52):
So it's important that as youbring people in, there are ways,
and there are a lot of, uh,
assessments and things and you cando to kind of assess like hard,
soft skills sound. But you may notnecessarily need to hire for that.
You could just ensure that within yourorganization you have a foundation for
ensuring, like, for example, um, howyou work. Like, and you have a safe, uh,
(08:13):
work environment where people canspeak what they, the truth basically.
Or that you create that foundation inalready in your work environment and you
can facilitate those interactions withpeople. So it's not a matter of like,
you hire a person, yeah.They be bad on empathy,
therefore I'm not gonna hirethem. That sort of thing.
So it's a matter of making surethat, that you also as a manager,
(08:33):
hiring manager that you are in work withleadership in your organization to make
sure that you,
you have those things in place to makesure that you create SF environment for
collaboration opportunity to expandyourself in any skill, hard or soft.
So if you had to pick out the toptwo soft skills that are must-haves,
what are they? Oof.
. Like that'sdifficult. So many. I,
(08:54):
I've talked about 50 plus in thepodcast. I'm like, oh, this is important.
This is important. I thinkoverlook listening is so important.
And I've talked to a few peoplein the podcast about that.
It's not something like, I'm gonna getbetter at listening today. Yeah. Your,
your partner may tell you you need tobe a better listener. But, you know,
sometimes our work, he just, uh,
a lot of the miscommunicationsand and hours lost Yeah.
(09:16):
Are because peopledidn't listen correctly.
So definitely listening is akiss skill. And adaptability.
Meaning adaptability cuzshifting environments, you know,
we had covid a few years agothat kind of shook us heavily,
and if we were not ableto adapt quickly, you,
you could see it was heavy mentally.For a lot of us learning from that,
(09:38):
we know things can happen. We knowthings change, layoffs happen,
hiring happens. We just haveto be learned to be adaptable.
How do we learn from others?
How do we learn new things to key skillsthat we need to cultivate now? Yeah.
Yeah.
I think those are two keyingredients to a lot of work.
You have to yeah.
Be able to adapt and be resilientto change and be willing to
(10:02):
change with the change and not fight it.
There are points where it's acceptableto have some standup and hey,
we're not doing that. Orwhat have you, you know,
for logical or good reason maybe.But for the bigger picture,
yeah, you definitely have to kind ofget along to get along in some regard.
Yeah. Let's go ahead and switch up.
(10:23):
And I want you to define for mewhat knowledge management is.
Oh, great. And I, I was justlaughing because, you know,
work with a department of defense and itbecomes a epic discussion all the time.
Like that's defined knowledge management.
And it could be hours of conversationjust trying to define the concept, uh,
discipline that conveysour ability to capture,
(10:46):
organize, and share information,knowledge in an organization.
So I think that's kind of like ageneral, um, definition. And I,
and I'm sure after, uh,
I'll go back and say I should have saidthis also about knowledge management
. So I think it's a wonderfuldiscipline and I, but I think there's, um,
one thing is that even within theDepartment of Defense, for example,
(11:07):
there's a lot of misunderstandingstoo. While knowledge management is,
and they think it'sSure point than portals.
I think it could be leveraged much more,particularly as we transition in our,
or hear more about data management,
and there could be a lot of moreinteraction and opportunity for km,
which I don't think it'snecessarily obvious for a lot of.
People.
What is the evolutionarytransition of knowledge management
(11:31):
as you see it? You've,
you've worked in Department of Defenseand they have a very established
parameter of where it sets andwhat it does and how it operates.
But is it lost a little bitwith the culture, do you think?
Um, it might be, um, I think itmight be lost in the opportunity.
Like as people who, who they,
(11:53):
they have a role of knowledgemanagement in organization.
Maybe sometimes we're kindof working in a vacuum,
like necessarily likefocusing on like, okay,
I'm gonna help this particular customerand this particular thing and that
strategic view of how knowledgemanagement can help advance things.
And we've truly aligned to the mission.
Sometimes I think getslost because of the,
(12:14):
it's important to have a bird side viewof things and really consider ourselves
in km essential part of leadership,
like working hand on hand withcommander or whoever in terms of, Hey,
we're here to help you.
Here's how knowledge flowsthrough the organization.
So I think there's so much opportunitythere that sometimes gets lost in the
(12:34):
task of doing, you know mm-hmm.
, you know,
what have you seen change in theevolution of knowledge and its management.
Evolution of knowledge and its management?
I've seen there's a lot moreemphasis, I guess, in, um,
ensuring that it's discoverable.
I believe it might beefforts to tag content,
to label content.
(12:56):
I think that's a good change that I'veseen to make sure that if there's no
multiple versions of things, I've seen,
at least in the dd more collaboration inthat sense of ensuring that information
across the board. There's understandingof like this, this division here,
for example, in this other division,we all have the same knowledge.
Let's consolidate that. So a goodchange on that that I could say.
Is it all technology has been leadingthe evolution or is it people?
(13:19):
Um, a lot people,
there's a lot more effort of intra like,
collaboration across the board.And that's how, in an effort,
I guess also from people,individuals, sorry, our motivation,
like we wanna save time, we wanna beable, uh, find the answers quickly.
People drive a lot of that changebecause part of the knowledge management
(13:40):
aspect is that there's alot of interactions across the board and not people
just staying in their silos.
So I think there's a lot being a lot moregrowth in that flatter organizations,
people realizing the importance ofthat and kind of acting accordingly.
Let's wrap up both ends ofthis discussion around how does
a, a small business, a smallnonprofit, a small organization,
(14:04):
think about how they build their company,
their business with thethought of soft skills and
knowledge management forefrontto think about how should they
engage their people well and their.
Knowledge. Um,
so it will be important forthat organization to ensure that they have in place
(14:25):
already, like just capturing theknowledge, capturing the processes,
capturing like,
this is how we do things and it doesn'tneed to be anything complicated.
It's just like, here's ourstandard operating procedures,
here's how we expect to do things.
And aside from just taking thatinformation and just posting it somewhere,
and like,
the great thing about small organizationsis that there's a whole lot more
collaboration at once. So for example,
(14:45):
bailing standup meetings ordoing like weekly things,
but doing them like the sort of like,Hey, here's what I'm working with,
here's what I need help with. Butnot just giving status. Just like,
kind of like the whole collaboration.So collaboration will be key.
And especially since the beginningand during our organization,
giving people the opportunity torealize like, hey, we're, we're a team.
We're here to work together.Let's share that information.
(15:07):
That's part of the softskill collaboration, trust,
and in that sense of knowledge management,
making sure that that is information iscaptured somewhere and then everybody
has access to it,
seeing what the information and theinteractions as a collaborative effort.
Well, I like that. So what you'resaying is that in this instance,
if they can create a documented process
(15:31):
or your, your standardoperating procedures,
something that documents the overallmovement mm-hmm.,
and then you reinforce that with daily or
weekly sessions, uh, and you're,
you're basically trying to get peopleto communicate and collaborate,
and so you're setting astage for behavior mm-hmm.
(15:52):
to be ingrained in peoplethat that's, this is how we do things.
I'm bringing that up because that seemsto be a key ingredient in building a
work culture. If you can do that,
then you would really beready and prepared to scale up. Mm-hmm.,
I would think, you know, if you,
if you've got those base mechanismsbuilt in and people understand
(16:13):
it and why they do it, yeah.
Then you can start to scale up aslong as this facilitates that growth.
Yeah. And that's right. And the greatthing, I love working in small teams,
so being part of like new initiatives,everybody knows what they're doing,
they're supporting each other.You know, you provide a,
a suggestion and the the otherpersons are appreciative of that.
Once you start growing, it'simportant to make sure that,
(16:35):
that's kind of kept ina way that as you grow,
everybody's doing the role and youforgot what the other person on the other
side was doing. And that collaborativeeffort kind of gets lost or like, uh,
gets defensive of like, no, no,no, this is fine lane. So it,
that's the key of like, as you grow Yes.
Making sure that you emphasizethat that's very important. And it,
as you scale up to keep thatsense of trust and collaboration.
(16:58):
How do you measure success when you'retrying to look at soft skills and
knowledge management?
Is there a metric that you havein mind and performance or,
or some evaluation to startlooking at a return on investment?
Hmm. That's an interesting question.
And I think it will not beto measure the soft scale or
(17:18):
the knowledge management in itself.
You will measure with your productlike what you are delivering. Like, uh,
if you are part of a developmentteam, for example, and you are, um,
expected to produce these things,
you're not gonna measure that developmentteam in like the scale of trust,
empathy and all that stuff. You measurethe fact that how they produce things.
Are they meeting projects on time?Delivering stuff on time? Yeah.
(17:42):
The velocity.
I guess that will be a good way justyou measure by the product itself.
You're not measure theping, like the Yeah.
The level of PM in itself necessarily.
You measure their result andthat's what you care about.
You wanna see the whole purpose ofsoft skills and as well as knowledge
management do, is to measure the, theresult of means to get to that end,
which is a more effectiveorganization, a more motivation.
(18:03):
You can measure it in the way of like,you know, your job satisfaction too.
So those things will be used to measurinstead of like measuring the skill in
itself. You could measure, Iguess k maturity, but that's,
that's just means to an end. Yeah.
And what leaders wanna care about is it'smy team producing and also if the man,
if I'm a manager, I is everybodyhappy? Okay, all good. Yeah.
So that's pretty much.
(18:24):
Yeah. And that requiresa level of awareness, uh,
for whoever's eyeball on thatto really see what's happening.
If you were gonna measurecommunications and you're gonna do a,
an analysis of in the team structurewho communicates and who doesn't,
who's your outlier, you know, andthose types of patterns, land hold,
they can kind of game that system just to,
(18:45):
if they know somebody'slooking at that number, right?
So they just game the systemand it doesn't really add value.
But one thing that youbrought out was velocity.
And I never really thought of it likethat because knowledge management and soft
skills gives a velocity enhancement to the
organization's ability. I like thatbecause velocity, I get, you know,
(19:07):
that's speed, that's, that's movement.
That means there's nothingblocking the, the pathway, no.
Of the volo of the mission of the product.
And I just think that'sa brilliant concept.
We need to figure out how wemeasure velocity of an organization.
I think that's the newmetric. Yeah., what's
your velocity? Yeah. Right.
Okay.
Yeah, that would be interesting. Andthat concept came about like, um,
(19:30):
in the development world, asyou measure, like, you know,
you have your use of stories,
which of the requirementsfor a particular product.
And when the developers gettogether in a scrum framework,
they assign story points to aparticular story, to a task.
And as you define, like,these are the points,
and it's not a points oflike points, not equal hours,
they equal like complexity. Okay. Oh.Um, there's a way to measure that, that,
(19:53):
you know, you calculate and asyou measure sprint, price sprint,
then you're able to measure like,
kind of like the velocity of the teamthat's in the just idea of the whole
thing. Um, but I like your idea doing of,
of kind of finding ways of measuring thevelocity of the organization. I think,
I'm sure this research on that. Yeah.
There's gotta be a dashboard somewherewhere somebody's looking at their
velocity. I like any last words of wisdom?
(20:14):
I'm curious to know from your end,
what do you think are the soft skillsthat you think we should cultivate.
More? There's a lot of talk andpublications around grit and
that ability to adapt andget along and, and move on.
Uh,
the grit factor to me is thatinternal combustion that a human has
(20:36):
to just keep pushing, keep going,
don't take no for an answer kind of thing.
Perpetuate the motion toforward sustainability,
internal sustainability,self-awareness, listening for sure.
Communications in a format.
So I've been military and thereis a format for construction of
(20:58):
communications. And I wanna sayto the general public out there,
if you're one of these folksthat is a mad typist and thinks
that sending 900 word emails
is a good thing,, no, stop that.
So I think training people how tocommunicate and communicate efficiently
(21:20):
is a key ingredient,because more is not better.
So the concise of whatthe communication is,
I think is a key ingredientto the training. Uh,
communication has to beconcise, understandable, usable, and all those things.
And if someone is not practicing that,
but they are very verbose and cantype, uh, you know, 500 words a second,
(21:43):
they're not gonna communicatewith me. Well, concise of,
of communication I think to me isa, is a pet peeve, as you can tell.
A bit of a pet peeve. I, I,
I think there's a lot of moving partsto soft skills and I betcha 10 years
from now, the soft skills areprobably not gonna change much,
but the tech or the hard skills aregonna keep changing all over the.
(22:06):
Place. Yeah, definitely. Andhaving adaptability will help you.
Adjusting to that too. Yeah.
Adjusting to the future. Yes.
, the typing, theemails part. I, I hear your.
Page. You hear me? I know. Yeah.
.
It's not easy, you know, andget me concise takes time. But,
but I appreciate that.
Fill that page up. Fillthe page up, you know,
(22:27):
so I think there's an automatic pilot forsome people to just fill that page up.
Yeah. Well, thank you very much, yadi.It's been a blast to talk with you today.
Well, great talking with you too.
You have just finished our latest becauseyou need to know a public service of
(22:51):
Pioneer Knowledge Services. Pleasejoin us on LinkedIn and find
us@pioneerks.org.
This is Edwin k Morris,
and you are about to embark on thenext Pioneer Knowledge Services
because you need to know a digitalresource for you to listen to
folks share their experience andknowledge around the field of knowledge
management and nonprofit work.
(00:35):
I am Javi Carro and I amoriginally from Puerto Rico.
Now I live in sunny Florida.
My day job is primarily being atech consultant, project manager,
scrum master,
a bunch of different things within theDepartment of Defense in the tech field.
I'm also the host of thepodcast Hardcore Soft Skills,
(00:55):
which I created a couple of years ago,
particularly to focus on those skills,
those non-technical skillsthat are so essential for, uh,
any project for our roles. And Ibeen wanting to go deep into those.
And every week I talkwith renowned experts.
We dig deep into different skillsby negotiation, conflict resolution.
So in each episode a different skill.
(01:17):
I'm also been in the field ofknowledge management for about, uh,
a decade or over a decade now.And I enjoy it very much. I,
I love talking about in terms of thecombination of knowledge management with
how organizations work, howconnections are created.
Um,
so the last book I read was called Kung Fu
(01:40):
and it's actually from a stem horn.
And what I love about that book is thatit provided so much specific advice
on how to basically do martialarts in verbal communication.
So it was very interesting inthe sense of, uh, how to say no,
how to address difficultconversations, how to sell yourself,
(02:00):
and why elevator speeches do notwork. So I enjoy that book very much.
That's very cool. So kind of a,
a defensive posture inthe mental space of verbal
communication.
Yeah, I guess it's, it is,you know, I like that concept.
She coined that term Tong fu. So I Ilove it. Burn
(02:22):
Oh, that's cool. Can you definefor me what a soft skill is?
A soft skill is those skills that are not
necessarily associated to a particular,you know, a task such as, for example,
I like to define it in comparisonwith hard skills. Like hard skills,
meaning like how do you operate asystem? How do you do a particular task?
(02:45):
Soft skill is, let's say, a littlebit mushy in the sense of like,
they're considered, it is presumedthat we have them overall by,
as part of our personality. Like,
you're a great communicator or youare great at resolving conflict.
Those other things that if we didn'thave them, basically whatever,
our day-to-day liveswill be very difficult.
(03:06):
And the key thing is tounderstand that it's a skill,
that it's somethingthat it's learnable too.
So if I'm not a greatcommunicator in public,
I could become one through practice.Okay. The same through negotiation,
collaboration. Cause some of us,um, may love working with teams,
others will say, well, I don't wannawork with teams, but not necessarily,
cuz we all like to collaborate. There'sjust techniques and tools to do that.
(03:29):
So that's what I meanby the term soft skills.
Would comprehension and awarenessbe a soft skill in your book? I,
comprehension and awareness?
Um, I think they're building blocksfor, uh, skill. Like for example,
when you're talking about awareness,uh, skill, I will define yes, awareness,
like self-awareness or evenawareness of others. So those are,
(03:49):
and those are things that we definitelyneed to cultivate and we manage
ourselves. Cause sometimeswe're just, well.
I'm, I'm, well, I'm curiousabout that. Yeah. Because the,
in the last five years or so,
empathy has become a partof the corporate landscape.
And as far as being empathetic,an empathetic leader,
an empathetic listener, collaborator,
(04:11):
and empathy is not a, what I wouldcall a technical skill. Mm-hmm.
What's behind getting softskills reinforced in an
organization?
Yeah, it's important. And,and from what I've seen,
you can have a team of like wonderfulpeople that are amazing in what they do.
(04:33):
Yet when it comes to them to getthem all together, work in a room,
just have a meeting, it becomesvery difficult at times. You know,
if you didn't have the ability tofacilitate another skill to facilitate a
meeting, to understandlike, okay, this is a,
this is a way we could do it andthese are the tools that we can use to
facilitate it is important to listen,
which is of a very overlooked skillas well. So Uhhuh
(04:56):
it is the foundation for making surethat those hard skills sets those all
brilliant people are actuallyable to create great things. So,
as I say in my podcast,
soft skills make hard skills workbecause it is very important that yes,
you have all the awesomepeople on your team,
but how do you make sure thatthey work together in a way?
How do they manage their time?
And especially now in this timeswhere we are transitioning from
(05:21):
remote work to in-office work. Soin both environments or hybrid,
the ability to work together and find theright tools for that is very important
to make sure that your company or yourorganization is productive and that
everybody can be happy at workand just produce great things.
Is there a solution out there thatis either artificial intelligence or
(05:42):
just technology basedthat helps fill this gap?
Um, the gap of.
Uh, the soft skills.Mm-hmm.
we're gonna spend the next five years,
every week we're gonna train on softskills and everybody's gonna do this,
and we're, we're all gonna get better.Mm-hmm.
is there something that supplementsthe workspace to help elevate soft
(06:04):
skills, um, through that? A formal, youknow, taking a two week course or, you.
Know Yeah. Cause taking I guess theAI or, or like the automation part,
let's say. So you couldtake like a course. Okay.
And you could takethings like, for example,
I'm thinking of there's tools that maywanna be able automate chat, for example.
They could be configured in a way thatyou could use better terms, like, uh,
(06:24):
you know, more empathetic terms orthings like that. That those things are,
they could be trained, this couldbe trainable. Yeah. However,
when it comes to working together,
that part of working together to createthose things very important to you as
individuals cultivate thoseskills. And it's not just,
I'm glad you mentioned a part ofcourses cause you could take courses,
listen to a bunch of podcasts,but it's through practice.
(06:46):
And even getting a coach for that or orgetting people to help you practice that
is very important too. It'snot just like, I took a class,
now I'm a master of publicspeaker. Of course not.
So it was a matter of like practicingYeah. And getting coaching too. Yeah. Do.
You see that soft skills isan artifact of a work culture?
Or is the work culture definethe soft skills, right?
(07:09):
Is is there a prescription to make agood selection in one hiring mm-hmm.
building that culturethat wants this mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And actually it's great that you askthat questions because what I've seen,
for example, in many teams is that youhave some people that will hire, yeah,
(07:30):
okay,
we're gonna hire these people for theirtechnical skills and these are the other
people that will be like, oh,they're great communicator.
Or they bring the soft skills in.
But why not ingrain both in all theindividuals that you have in the
organization? Cause you willhave, you could hire, uh,
amazing people and have this other personthat you're gonna think are gonna fill
in those caps for the soft skilland it may not always work. Yeah.
(07:52):
So it's important that as youbring people in, there are ways,
and there are a lot of, uh,
assessments and things and you cando to kind of assess like hard,
soft skills sound. But you may notnecessarily need to hire for that.
You could just ensure that within yourorganization you have a foundation for
ensuring, like, for example, um, howyou work. Like, and you have a safe, uh,
(08:13):
work environment where people canspeak what they, the truth basically.
Or that you create that foundation inalready in your work environment and you
can facilitate those interactions withpeople. So it's not a matter of like,
you hire a person, yeah.They be bad on empathy,
therefore I'm not gonna hirethem. That sort of thing.
So it's a matter of making surethat, that you also as a manager,
(08:33):
hiring manager that you are in work withleadership in your organization to make
sure that you,
you have those things in place to makesure that you create SF environment for
collaboration opportunity to expandyourself in any skill, hard or soft.
So if you had to pick out the toptwo soft skills that are must-haves,
what are they? Oof.
(08:54):
I've talked about 50 plus in thepodcast. I'm like, oh, this is important.
This is important. I thinkoverlook listening is so important.
And I've talked to a few peoplein the podcast about that.
It's not something like, I'm gonna getbetter at listening today. Yeah. Your,
your partner may tell you you need tobe a better listener. But, you know,
sometimes our work, he just, uh,
a lot of the miscommunicationsand and hours lost Yeah.
(09:16):
Are because peopledidn't listen correctly.
So definitely listening is akiss skill. And adaptability.
Meaning adaptability cuzshifting environments, you know,
we had covid a few years agothat kind of shook us heavily,
and if we were not ableto adapt quickly, you,
you could see it was heavy mentally.For a lot of us learning from that,
(09:38):
we know things can happen. We knowthings change, layoffs happen,
hiring happens. We just haveto be learned to be adaptable.
How do we learn from others?
How do we learn new things to key skillsthat we need to cultivate now? Yeah.
Yeah.
I think those are two keyingredients to a lot of work.
You have to yeah.
Be able to adapt and be resilientto change and be willing to
(10:02):
change with the change and not fight it.
There are points where it's acceptableto have some standup and hey,
we're not doing that. Orwhat have you, you know,
for logical or good reason maybe.But for the bigger picture,
yeah, you definitely have to kind ofget along to get along in some regard.
Yeah. Let's go ahead and switch up.
(10:23):
And I want you to define for mewhat knowledge management is.
Oh, great. And I, I was justlaughing because, you know,
work with a department of defense and itbecomes a epic discussion all the time.
Like that's defined knowledge management.
And it could be hours of conversationjust trying to define the concept, uh,
discipline that conveysour ability to capture,
(10:46):
organize, and share information,knowledge in an organization.
So I think that's kind of like ageneral, um, definition. And I,
and I'm sure after, uh,
I'll go back and say I should have saidthis also about knowledge management
one thing is that even within theDepartment of Defense, for example,
(11:07):
there's a lot of misunderstandingstoo. While knowledge management is,
and they think it'sSure point than portals.
I think it could be leveraged much more,particularly as we transition in our,
or hear more about data management,
and there could be a lot of moreinteraction and opportunity for km,
which I don't think it'snecessarily obvious for a lot of.
People.
What is the evolutionarytransition of knowledge management
(11:31):
as you see it? You've,
you've worked in Department of Defenseand they have a very established
parameter of where it sets andwhat it does and how it operates.
But is it lost a little bitwith the culture, do you think?
Um, it might be, um, I think itmight be lost in the opportunity.
Like as people who, who they,
(11:53):
they have a role of knowledgemanagement in organization.
Maybe sometimes we're kindof working in a vacuum,
like necessarily likefocusing on like, okay,
I'm gonna help this particular customerand this particular thing and that
strategic view of how knowledgemanagement can help advance things.
And we've truly aligned to the mission.
Sometimes I think getslost because of the,
(12:14):
it's important to have a bird side viewof things and really consider ourselves
in km essential part of leadership,
like working hand on hand withcommander or whoever in terms of, Hey,
we're here to help you.
Here's how knowledge flowsthrough the organization.
So I think there's so much opportunitythere that sometimes gets lost in the
(12:34):
task of doing, you know mm-hmm.
what have you seen change in theevolution of knowledge and its management.
Evolution of knowledge and its management?
I've seen there's a lot moreemphasis, I guess, in, um,
ensuring that it's discoverable.
I believe it might beefforts to tag content,
to label content.
(12:56):
I think that's a good change that I'veseen to make sure that if there's no
multiple versions of things, I've seen,
at least in the dd more collaboration inthat sense of ensuring that information
across the board. There's understandingof like this, this division here,
for example, in this other division,we all have the same knowledge.
Let's consolidate that. So a goodchange on that that I could say.
Is it all technology has been leadingthe evolution or is it people?
(13:19):
Um, a lot people,
there's a lot more effort of intra like,
collaboration across the board.And that's how, in an effort,
I guess also from people,individuals, sorry, our motivation,
like we wanna save time, we wanna beable, uh, find the answers quickly.
People drive a lot of that changebecause part of the knowledge management
(13:40):
aspect is that there's alot of interactions across the board and not people
just staying in their silos.
So I think there's a lot being a lot moregrowth in that flatter organizations,
people realizing the importance ofthat and kind of acting accordingly.
Let's wrap up both ends ofthis discussion around how does
a, a small business, a smallnonprofit, a small organization,
(14:04):
think about how they build their company,
their business with thethought of soft skills and
knowledge management forefrontto think about how should they
engage their people well and their.
Knowledge. Um,
so it will be important forthat organization to ensure that they have in place
(14:25):
already, like just capturing theknowledge, capturing the processes,
capturing like,
this is how we do things and it doesn'tneed to be anything complicated.
It's just like, here's ourstandard operating procedures,
here's how we expect to do things.
And aside from just taking thatinformation and just posting it somewhere,
and like,
the great thing about small organizationsis that there's a whole lot more
collaboration at once. So for example,
(14:45):
bailing standup meetings ordoing like weekly things,
but doing them like the sort of like,Hey, here's what I'm working with,
here's what I need help with. Butnot just giving status. Just like,
kind of like the whole collaboration.So collaboration will be key.
And especially since the beginningand during our organization,
giving people the opportunity torealize like, hey, we're, we're a team.
We're here to work together.Let's share that information.
(15:07):
That's part of the softskill collaboration, trust,
and in that sense of knowledge management,
making sure that that is information iscaptured somewhere and then everybody
has access to it,
seeing what the information and theinteractions as a collaborative effort.
Well, I like that. So what you'resaying is that in this instance,
if they can create a documented process
(15:31):
or your, your standardoperating procedures,
something that documents the overallmovement mm-hmm.
and then you reinforce that with daily or
weekly sessions, uh, and you're,
you're basically trying to get peopleto communicate and collaborate,
and so you're setting astage for behavior mm-hmm.
(15:52):
I'm bringing that up because that seemsto be a key ingredient in building a
work culture. If you can do that,
then you would really beready and prepared to scale up. Mm-hmm.
I would think, you know, if you,
if you've got those base mechanismsbuilt in and people understand
(16:13):
it and why they do it, yeah.
Then you can start to scale up aslong as this facilitates that growth.
Yeah. And that's right. And the greatthing, I love working in small teams,
so being part of like new initiatives,everybody knows what they're doing,
they're supporting each other.You know, you provide a,
a suggestion and the the otherpersons are appreciative of that.
Once you start growing, it'simportant to make sure that,
(16:35):
that's kind of kept ina way that as you grow,
everybody's doing the role and youforgot what the other person on the other
side was doing. And that collaborativeeffort kind of gets lost or like, uh,
gets defensive of like, no, no,no, this is fine lane. So it,
that's the key of like, as you grow Yes.
Making sure that you emphasizethat that's very important. And it,
as you scale up to keep thatsense of trust and collaboration.
(16:58):
How do you measure success when you'retrying to look at soft skills and
knowledge management?
Is there a metric that you havein mind and performance or,
or some evaluation to startlooking at a return on investment?
Hmm. That's an interesting question.
And I think it will not beto measure the soft scale or
(17:18):
the knowledge management in itself.
You will measure with your productlike what you are delivering. Like, uh,
if you are part of a developmentteam, for example, and you are, um,
expected to produce these things,
you're not gonna measure that developmentteam in like the scale of trust,
empathy and all that stuff. You measurethe fact that how they produce things.
Are they meeting projects on time?Delivering stuff on time? Yeah.
(17:42):
The velocity.
I guess that will be a good way justyou measure by the product itself.
You're not measure theping, like the Yeah.
The level of PM in itself necessarily.
You measure their result andthat's what you care about.
You wanna see the whole purpose ofsoft skills and as well as knowledge
management do, is to measure the, theresult of means to get to that end,
which is a more effectiveorganization, a more motivation.
(18:03):
You can measure it in the way of like,you know, your job satisfaction too.
So those things will be used to measurinstead of like measuring the skill in
itself. You could measure, Iguess k maturity, but that's,
that's just means to an end. Yeah.
And what leaders wanna care about is it'smy team producing and also if the man,
if I'm a manager, I is everybodyhappy? Okay, all good. Yeah.
So that's pretty much.
(18:24):
Yeah. And that requiresa level of awareness, uh,
for whoever's eyeball on thatto really see what's happening.
If you were gonna measurecommunications and you're gonna do a,
an analysis of in the team structurewho communicates and who doesn't,
who's your outlier, you know, andthose types of patterns, land hold,
they can kind of game that system just to,
(18:45):
if they know somebody'slooking at that number, right?
So they just game the systemand it doesn't really add value.
But one thing that youbrought out was velocity.
And I never really thought of it likethat because knowledge management and soft
skills gives a velocity enhancement to the
organization's ability. I like thatbecause velocity, I get, you know,
(19:07):
that's speed, that's, that's movement.
That means there's nothingblocking the, the pathway, no.
Of the volo of the mission of the product.
And I just think that'sa brilliant concept.
We need to figure out how wemeasure velocity of an organization.
I think that's the newmetric. Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, that would be interesting. Andthat concept came about like, um,
(19:30):
in the development world, asyou measure, like, you know,
you have your use of stories,
which of the requirementsfor a particular product.
And when the developers gettogether in a scrum framework,
they assign story points to aparticular story, to a task.
And as you define, like,these are the points,
and it's not a points oflike points, not equal hours,
they equal like complexity. Okay. Oh.Um, there's a way to measure that, that,
(19:53):
you know, you calculate and asyou measure sprint, price sprint,
then you're able to measure like,
kind of like the velocity of the teamthat's in the just idea of the whole
thing. Um, but I like your idea doing of,
of kind of finding ways of measuring thevelocity of the organization. I think,
I'm sure this research on that. Yeah.
There's gotta be a dashboard somewherewhere somebody's looking at their
velocity. I like any last words of wisdom?
(20:14):
I'm curious to know from your end,
what do you think are the soft skillsthat you think we should cultivate.
More? There's a lot of talk andpublications around grit and
that ability to adapt andget along and, and move on.
Uh,
the grit factor to me is thatinternal combustion that a human has
(20:36):
to just keep pushing, keep going,
don't take no for an answer kind of thing.
Perpetuate the motion toforward sustainability,
internal sustainability,self-awareness, listening for sure.
Communications in a format.
So I've been military and thereis a format for construction of
(20:58):
communications. And I wanna sayto the general public out there,
if you're one of these folksthat is a mad typist and thinks
that sending 900 word emails
is a good thing,
So I think training people how tocommunicate and communicate efficiently
(21:20):
is a key ingredient,because more is not better.
So the concise of whatthe communication is,
I think is a key ingredientto the training. Uh,
communication has to beconcise, understandable, usable, and all those things.
And if someone is not practicing that,
but they are very verbose and cantype, uh, you know, 500 words a second,
(21:43):
they're not gonna communicatewith me. Well, concise of,
of communication I think to me isa, is a pet peeve, as you can tell.
A bit of a pet peeve. I, I,
I think there's a lot of moving partsto soft skills and I betcha 10 years
from now, the soft skills areprobably not gonna change much,
but the tech or the hard skills aregonna keep changing all over the.
(22:06):
Place. Yeah, definitely. Andhaving adaptability will help you.
Adjusting to that too. Yeah.
Adjusting to the future. Yes.
Page. You hear me? I know. Yeah.
It's not easy, you know, andget me concise takes time. But,
but I appreciate that
Fill that page up. Fillthe page up, you know,
(22:27):
so I think there's an automatic pilot forsome people to just fill that page up.
Yeah. Well, thank you very much, yadi.It's been a blast to talk with you today.
Well, great talking with you too.
You have just finished our latest becauseyou need to know a public service of
(22:51):
Pioneer Knowledge Services. Pleasejoin us on LinkedIn and find
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